Mark Madoff’s Widow Blames His Suicide on Father Bernard Madoff in Book

By Bob Van Voris -
Oct 21, 2011

Stephanie Madoff Mack, the widow of
Mark Madoff, defends her husband’s innocence and blames his 2010
suicide on her former father-in-law, convicted confidence man
Bernard Madoff, in a memoir published yesterday.

“I never doubted Mark’s innocence for a single second,”
Mack says in “The End of Normal: A Wife’s Anguish, a Widow’s
New Life,” written with Tamara Jones. “He was a hero. But Mark
was too engulfed in his own pain to feel any of that pride
himself.”

Mack, who says she changed her last name to try to avoid
the intense scrutiny that went with the Madoff name, describes
her marriage, her relationship with Bernard and his wife, Ruth Madoff, and her struggle to come to terms with Mark’s death.

Bernard Madoff, 73, was arrested and his firm forced into
bankruptcy in December 2008. He pleaded guilty to running the
biggest Ponzi scheme in history and is serving a 150-year
sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina.

Mark Madoff hanged himself in the Manhattan apartment he
shared with his wife and their children on Dec. 11, 2010, two
years to the day after his father’s arrest. He was 46.

Mark Madoff, divorced with two children from his first
marriage, married Mack in 2004. They had two children, a boy and
a girl.

‘Clueless, Not Corrupt’

In the book, Mack says she believes Bernard Madoff’s family
had no connection to the fraud. Her mother-in-law, Ruth Madoff,
was “clueless, not corrupt,” she writes.

Mark Madoff and his brother Andrew Madoff both worked for
the legitimate, market-making side of their father’s business.
After his arrest, both said they had no knowledge of the fraud
he ran for decades until he confessed it to them.

In the weeks leading up to Madoff’s arrest, Mack says, Mark
told her that he and Andrew were worried about their father and
had seen him sitting in his Manhattan office, staring at the
ceiling for long periods of time. Mark thought his father was
ill or dying, she said.

‘One Big Lie’

Mack tells of her husband’s shock and anger after his
father told him and Andrew on Dec. 10, 2008, “It’s all one big
lie.” She tells of meeting a friend in the apartment that day
to discuss plans for a nursery for the son she and Mark would
soon have. Mark interrupted the meeting with a phone call.

“It’s my father. My father has done something very bad,
and is probably going to jail for the rest of his life,” he
told her, according to Mack.

Mark and Andrew Madoff immediately turned their father in
to U.S. authorities and he was arrested the next day, Mack
writes.

After he was sent to prison, Bernard Madoff compared the
facility to a college campus, with “lovely lawns and trees,”
she writes. “I am quite the celebrity and treated like a Mafia
Don,” she says he told her in a letter.

Mack was in Florida, at Disney World with their daughter,
when Mark Madoff died. He had hung himself from a steel beam in
their apartment, using their dog’s leash as a noose. Their 2-
year-old son was asleep in the nursery.

‘Help’

Mack writes that when she woke up that morning, she found
two messages Mark had sent to her. The first, with a subject
line that read “Help,” said, “Please send someone to take
care of Nick,” their son. The second said, “I Love You.”

Her husband earlier tried to commit suicide by taking an
overdose of prescription drugs. He had written a note to his
father, Mack says.

“Bernie: Now you know how you have destroyed the lives of
your sons by your life of deceit. F___ you,” the note said,
according to Mack.

One night at 4 a.m., about a month after Mark’s suicide,
Mack wrote what she called “a bitter letter” to “Bernie.”

“I understand that you stole money from thousands of
innocent people -- your children, your grandchildren, your
entire family and even my parents,” Mack writes.“However, what
you must know is that you stole the love of my life and four of
your grandchildren’s father.”

She ended the letter: “I pray that your days in jail are
as dark as they can be, because let me tell you, it’s much
harder to survive on the outside -- and I refuse to let you ruin
my life.”

A few days later, Madoff wrote back, Mack says.

“I pray that you never have to experience the pain and
torment I live with every day. I would gladly give my own life
if I thought it would bring Mark back,” Madoff wrote, according
to Mack. “I blame myself for everything that has happened and
nothing will ever change this.”

“You ask how I can live with myself. I can’t, and I don’t
know how much longer I can go on.”